


I Know It Isn't Easy, To Swim Inside A Body Cold As Mine

by UniversallyEcho



Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, But also, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Very melodramatic, and polo and valerio never met in school, because they deserved a real chance, because valerio had been in london the entire time, in which polo's moms manage to send him to London, polo doesn't die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26524891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniversallyEcho/pseuds/UniversallyEcho
Summary: Polo hasn’t spoken to the boy. He has no intention to. But he’s fun to watch, generally nice to look at and every once in a while manages to upturn a quirk of Polo’s lips with his dance moves when he swings his body across the floor and grinds on the other patrons with about as much subtlety as a festival firework show. He’s magnetic enough that Polo also has no intention to look away.Polo decides he’s just going to admire from afar. Keep his hands away from things he could break, again, and do what he does best: stay invisible and out of peoples way. And maybe, if he was lucky, the boy would continue looking his way every once in a while, he could live with that. Except that the curly haired boy seems to have other plans.Or; a universe where Polo leaves the cursed Las Encinas in favour of London where he meets a curly haired boy with mirthful eyes and a crooked smile.
Relationships: Valerio Montesinos Hendrich/Leopoldo "Polo" Benavent Villada
Comments: 18
Kudos: 47





	I Know It Isn't Easy, To Swim Inside A Body Cold As Mine

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the song "Bloodstream" by Conor Byrne but I watched an edit of this pairing on youtube with the song "Born To Die" by Lana del rey and that honestly fit so well it was heartbreaking.

Polo trades in the buzzing of despairing chatter in the halls he spent the better half of his life walking through, with the people who had come to learn every facet of his personality and later distinctly hate him for it, in exchange for a first class seat flying to London. A city where the people are too preoccupied with their own lives to view everyone else as anything more than background noise. A city where no one cares about the undercurrents of Polo's existence because he’s just another face in the sea of crowds conforming to rectangular shapes to follow the white lines of the busy crosswalk. 

_‘A fresh start,’_ his moms call it. 

_‘An escape, a hideaway,’_ he understands.

Truthfully, there are a lot of words for what he’s doing. 

Carla would twist those words, find a way to make them work for her. Create a new definition for them maybe, one that would leave her bathing in glory and concealing the guilt as she washed the blood off of someone else’s hands. She would stretch out the syllables and hum contradictory expressions under her breath and drown whoever dared doubt her using a slew of achievements with such normality that she successfully left everyone dizzy from her sugar-coated venom.

Cayetana would create new words, she would pull them from the fairytales that she uses so heavily to dictate her every action and create a story of her own. One removed from harsh consequences and oblivious to the strict borders of reality. Words would tumble out of her, slipping through between her teeth, before she had the foresight to regulate them. Resulting in a bare-boned structure of misshapen deceptions, hazy in detail and left to the scrutiny of whoever is willing to listen, as she silently begged for validation to erase the bitter aftertaste lingering on her tongue.

Polo is not like them. He is a coward, and so, like all cowards, he hides.

⋆⋆⋆

Hiding comes easily to him. He’s had lots of practice at it, it’s basically second nature at this point. The part that’s not so easy, the thing that he foolishly underestimated is the accresent feeling of a beating heart, the one he feels pulsing directionless throughout his body. 

The heartbeat, not his, never his, is louder in London. As if it’s audibly protesting his need to run away, taunting his weakness. Of course the one person that he ends up killing is vengeful enough to continue haunting him beyond the grave, just his luck.

Thankfully, if there’s anything to take away from his years at Las Encinas, it’s the array of defense mechanisms utilized with more requisite than the sign up sheet for the guidance counselor. A tool for each nightmare that’s permanently etched it’s way into his subconscious. 

A shot of vodka for every thudding clang ringing through his ears, mirroring the blow that dented Marina’s head in. A cap full of pills for every puddle of blood he nearly trips on as he walks along the crooked edges of sidewalks during what were supposed to be soothing evening walks. The sharp edge of his cracked hand mirror— _I told you not to put fragile items in your carry-on sweetheart, his mom had sighed during his first call the morning after his move_ — pushing against the top layer of his skin for every day he woke up and the heartbeat, not his, never his, pulsed a little more loudly, vibrated violently against his bones. 

⋆⋆⋆

His newest discovery is a club. He comes across it after classes as he’s riding on a public bus, a recent necessity followed by a newfound dwelling on the unaccustomed prospect that there are now infinite paths available at his fingertips, when the neon sign hung at the top of unevenly stained glass walls almost blinds him. 

The presence of a club isn’t what intrigues him, there’s one at almost every corner of the city, it’s the way that this one seems to be exuding a charm unlike the modernistic stores beside it that catches his eye.

The exterior is decorated with vivid, solid, blocks of colours left streaky and chipped over time and revealing subtle residue of gold underneath from what must’ve been a previous paint job. The bubble font marquee spelling out the obscure name of the place has a malfunctioning letter, leaving a ‘L’ blinking half a beat behind the others and the mosaic-like panels look into a shaded room, brightened only with tacky fluorescent lights dotted around like confetti thrown against walls. It looks retro to a fault. Like someone took a worn down 90’s burger joint, reapplied some wallpaper, took out most of the furniture, and concealed the rest with erratic taste and endless trips to a flea market. It has a sense of individuality that’s hard to find in the upscale city, let alone anything he’s seen back home, and that alone is enough to pull him in that night. And every other night that following week. 

Taking that first step up the cracked cement entrance, a wave of familiarity rushes over him. 

Maybe it’s the ragged edges of a place that’s so broken and still trying so hard to pass off as simply unconventional. 

Maybe it’s the way the interior feels like the club he would frequent at least three times a week back in Spain. What with the mass of sweaty bodies flocking and writhing in synchrony and the addicting beat of the bass blasting from the speakers to drown out any creeping jolts of quickly spreading poisonous thoughts. Or maybe it’s how he’s reminded of that place he sometimes goes to when he swallows pills, _two on a good day and five on a bad one but never more than seven and only sometimes washed down with alcohol,_ that’s too dark to be his first glimpse at seeing the light but moving too slow to still be in the same realm of his daily routine.

It’s that comfort in similarity, the breath he can finally exhale when he’s there and the ease of the scheduled spontaneity that keeps him coming back.

Well that and the hot boy. The one with bouncy, inky curls and chiseled features whose closet is divided into two categories of either glittery and tacky or lacy and lavish but almost always just skimpy and the impressive way in which he still manages to make each outfit work to enhance his broad shoulders and carved muscles. The same boy who always glances at Polo. Once when he enters, then a second time when he orders a drink, _a different one each time and continuously more nonsensical than the last until his drink is really just a mismatched set of ingredients dropped into a glass and stirred_ , then a third and final time when he walks on the dance floor and doesn’t leave until much after Polo calls it quits for the night.

Polo hasn’t spoken to the boy. He has no intention to. But he’s fun to watch, generally nice to look at and every once in a while manages to upturn a quirk of Polo’s lips with his dance moves when he swings his body across the floor and grinds on the other patrons with about as much subtlety as a festival firework show. He’s magnetic enough that Polo also has no intention to look away. 

Polo decides he’s just going to admire from afar. Keep his hands away from things he could break, again, and do what he does best: stay invisible and out of peoples ways. And maybe, if he was lucky, the boy would continue looking his way every once in a while, he could live with that. Except that the curly haired boy seems to have other plans. 

It’s Thursday night and Polo is sitting in the corner seat at the back of the club. He’s watching, _hiding_ , and noticing, _hiding_ , and enjoying a peaceful night by allowing this place and it’s magic to submerge him and his racing heart completely, _hiding_ , when the boy, in mesh today with a high neck and cut out sides and exposing enough bare skin that Polo is unsteady, prances toward him. It’s a little intimidating and Polo is taken back, if only because he forgets sometimes that despite how others view him, how he views himself, most of the time, people _can_ actually see him. 

Not only does the curly haired boy see him, but he pursues him, with a glass in one hand and his other supporting his body to lean against the side of the wall in front of Polo’s table. He opens his mouth, plush lips parting, and Polo has no idea what he actually says because he’s more concerned with the vibrating tone of smooth honey that leaves his throat. Fuck. He sounds just as hot as he looks then. 

He has a slight accent, something Polo can’t quite place but it’s tilting his words ever so slightly, the way most people would use in a question but he inclines the pitch of every word, like they’re on a ferris wheel, slanted and off balance, menacing and electric. He’s speaking English but it may as well be gibberish because Polo only snaps out of his haze to catch the words, “new” and “dancing”. 

He’s prettier when they’re this close and face to face. He has narrow hazel eyes and high cheekbones and an even caramel complexion and a smile that’s ridiculously wide and obliviously anxiety inducing. And there’s his energy, a bubble around him that seems to be moving with the throbbing rhythm of the music encircling them and it’s a little jittery and a lot restless, like he’s pumping caffeine straight into his bloodstream. Polo kind of wants to reach out and grip onto his shoulders and just hold him there, firmly, unmoving, stationary. He doesn’t. But he wants to. 

Polo can feel beads of condensation from the melting ice in his untouched cup dripping steadily onto the dorsal of his hand, and it almost _burns_ before Polo remembers that it’s cold water and water is not supposed to burn. He wipes his hands on the rough material of his pants and smooths down the collar of his button down shirt.

The silky voice speaks again, “So? Are you rejecting me?”

Polo clears his throat, he definitely should’ve been listening harder, “Um, sorry, what exactly am I potentially rejecting you from?”

Valerio smirks, bemused, before repeating, “I asked if you would come dance with me.”

And there it is again, that little tilt, except it’s more precise this time, more deliberate. Like he knows, Polo reflects with a humiliating flush, that Polo is already so easily distracted by him.

“I don’t, dancing’s not exactly,” He thinks he’s mumbling now, it’s a miracle if anyone can hear him at all over the resounding noise of the club, but it still feels too much like he’s exposing himself to the world when he finishes a little lamely, “my thing”.

Valerio blinks, and then his smile is gone and Polo regrets everything, “So you _are_ rejecting me?”

And he sounds so dejected, so visibly deflated, that if Polo really was rejecting him, which he’s _not_ , he would immediately reconsider.

“Not you. The dance.”

“We’re one in the same. A package deal,” Valerio’s back to grinning now, and he’s being playful but Polo doesn’t miss the glinting implication of a dare.

There’s a choice to be made here. Polo’s not very good at those. He always chooses the wrong one.

“Okay, I’ll dance,” Polo relents, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” 

He’s entirely too sober for the way Valerio grasps his hand tight in his own and pulls them into the stream of moving bodies. 

He moves with intent, with purpose and drive and manic whim and it’s all so much for Polo. Minutes pass and feel like seconds as Polo throws his head back and sways with the drumming shockwaves that reverberate through his chest and into his palms. Palms that he presses with every opportunity against the other boy’s skin, a stroke of his strained bicep, a slope forward to cup around the nape of his neck, a press against his pulse. Polo feels him shiver at that, he’s sure of it.

The room streaks around him like someone left out his toddler attempts at abstract art in the rain, the neon fingerprints on thick cardboard, blurry and blending and dripping onto the floor, the paper soggy and ripping from the unprecedented pressure of the rough gravel underneath it but then the spots of yellow and green and blue are gone and all that’s left is red and it’s not paint but gut-twisting, slick blood, slippery and glossy, and the fingerprints are still his but now he’s rushing to clean them off, to erase any documentation of his blundering mistake, erase the evidence, with urgency and he’s gritting his teeth, clenching his jaw, holding his breath when—

The boy is kissing him, firm mouth against his, tethering him to reality, grounding him, and Polo can’t focus on anything but the sharp teeth sinking into his bottom lip. There's a flutter in his abdomen, a coiled knot of something sharp and heavy. It might be nausea, it might be a reignited fossilized spark. Either way, it keeps him dancing.

⋆⋆⋆

When they finish dancing, when it’s past 5am and the club kicks them out and Polo is already trying to come up with believable excuses for why he won’t be in class today, the boy turns to him, teeters into Polo’s side and whispers, “I’m glad you said yes, I’ve wanted to dance with you all week.”

It doesn’t take much of a movement for Polo to turn his head to stare right at him, “What would you have done if I said no?”

A snicker escapes his lips as he begrudgingly admits, “Sulked until you changed your mind, probably.”

Polo swallows at the thought of those lips pouting then licks and smacks his own and crimsons when he notices the way the boy tracks his every action. Polo stammers a bit, “Does that work?”

The boy cocks his head to the side, and studies Polo, tracing his features with his gaze and leaving Polo wondering what it is exactly that he’s looking for and if he ever finds it when he finally answers, “Worked on you just now and I didn’t even need to do anything.”

Nothing good could come from this close inspection and so Polo is prompted to quickly change the subject, to keep the boy talking with a question so he’s too engaged to leave, too engaged to regret, “Hey, what are you always doing here anyway? I saw you the first night I came in and you’ve been here every day since.”

He hums with deliberation, “The usual, drinking, dancing, ignoring all actual responsibilities.”

“The usual,” Polo echoes quietly, “not much seems usual about you.”

His eyes flicker and his smile widens, baring his teeth, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Polo’s voice is firm to make up for his staggered breathing, “Good. It is one.”

The boy reaches into the pocket of his studded silver joggers and pulls out a phone, before asking Polo, “What's your name?”

“My name?” 

“Yeah, well if I want to see you again I’m going to need your name, I was hoping for your number too but I’m worried now that might be too much for you.”

Polo ignores his teasing, too stuck on the first part of that question. “You want to see me again?” He asks, more carefully dubious than he has any right to be.

The boy heaves a sigh that seems more amused than frustrated at the transparency of Polo’s hesitance, “Is that a thing you do? Like are you cursed to only speak in questions or something?” 

Cursed to speak in questions? No. Cursed, just in general? Yeah, probably. Maybe it’s the karmic reinforcement coming to punish him for murdering someone, that would be reasonable enough.

This is exactly what he said he wasn’t going to do in London. Reaching out to people, interacting with them, creating bonds and connections and opening the door to the possibility of relationships. It’s the opposite of hiding. Much too daring to be characteristic of Polo at all. But Polo, Polo looks at the face waiting for his answer, looks at the rough chapped mouth that was engrossed with his just moments ago, looks at his expression, open and unwavering and there’s something about it, the crooked smile, _the tilt,_ that reminds him a little of another boy. Of Christian. His first almost, his first unrequited, his first loss slipping through the cracks of his resolution. He’s determined to not lose this one.

“It’s a thing I do when I’m nervous,” Polo admits, straightening his spine and reaching for the boys phone to enter his number into, “I’m Polo.”

“Valerio.”

Polo hands him, _Valerio_ , back his phone and promises to call. There’s a momentum, a winding build to the apex of their tension that Polo cracks when he reaches forward to nip at Valerio’s lips before darting away and leaving Valerio rooted in his place. 

It fills Polo with more pride than it ever sensibly should, that Valerio chokes on a laugh in stunned provocation before he smugly queries, “I’m not so sure _you’re_ the nervous one here.”

And the heartbeat, not his, never his, it levels and stutters and dwindles the tiniest bit.

⋆⋆⋆

He spends all of Friday laying under the covers of his bed with the lights off and curtains drawn and then the rest of the weekend making up for his excessive languor and before he knows it, it’s Monday and he’s sat back at a wooden desk with a hefty poetry collection opened in front of him.

They’ve started a new unit, only about a third through the last semester so there’s many more to come, and the teacher is droning on about the importance of triggers, of catalysts and turning points and the emphasis of plot points and unveiling epiphanies but Polo isn’t paying her any attention. He’s too busy grinning down at his phone. 

_How am I even supposed to know where to go_ , he texts Valerio as he adjusts the book he’s supposedly reading so that it covers the glinting screen from outside view.

 _i’ll pick you up, dont worry your pretty little head about it,_ Valerio replies instantly.

_You’re not driving. I’m serious, I’m suspending your license._

_i drove last time!_

Polo rolls his eyes, _Yeah that was kinda the problem. do you remember the lampost you nicked or did the impact suddenly cause short term memory loss?_

There’s a sudden lull in incoming messages and Polo wonders if this is Valerio taking a firm stance on the driving thing until his phone lights up with: _who is this? how do you have my number? if you don’t reveal yourself i’ll have to report this to the police for harassment. send pics asap if you want charges to be dropped._

Polo scoffs, _I’m driving. Send me the address,_ he sends back.

 _fine,_ Valerio relents, _but we play by my rules tonight._

⋆⋆⋆

When Valerio said he had the perfect spot to take him, Polo was expecting a restaurant or maybe a movie theatre not the rusty looking pawn shop they were currently standing in. 

Polo suspiciously watches as Valerio leans forward with his two elbows supporting him on the creaky wooden cashier table, speaking in hushed tones with the older man behind the counter, completely oblivious to the fact that the desk looked seconds away from crumbling under his weight. 

Polo questions, “This is the place you wanted to take me on a date to?”

Valerio’s eye flick to Polo’s, no doubt at Polo’s inability to refrain judgement and Valerio flashes him a mischievous look before asking, “This is a date?”

Polo is proud of himself for instigating this topic, he’s not about to fall into another cycle of messy detachment and unspecified relations. He’s glad to know he’s not that big of a sucker. He’s less proud, however, of the frazzled way he stutters, “I mean, I assumed—” 

Valerio maneuvers around Polo so huffs of his breath land against Polo’s ear and stretches a hand across the span of Polo’s shoulder, “Well, I guess since this is a date, I’ll let you choose anything in the entire store and I’ll buy it for you.”

“Anything?” Polo repeats, “I feel spoiled.”

“Oh good, your natural state.”

Polo bleats, “You think I’m spoiled?”

And Valerio just raises a questioning eyebrow, presses a chaste kiss against the expanse of Polo’s collarbones and Polo’s facade of peeved offense crumbles.

“Having expensive taste does not equate to being spoiled,” he retorts on a last attempt at disgruntlement because he doesn’t think he’s supposed to be so easily swayed into blissful contentment. 

“It’s okay,” Valerio murmurs into his skin, “I like them a little spoiled.”

Well, in that case. 

Polo looks around to take in the knick knacks and novelties placed precariously in glass containers and hung by metal hooks against the flecked walls. 

“This one,” he reaches out to pluck a painted acrylic frog from its confined arrangement. The structure weighs heavier than expected on his palm as Polo notices the patchy gold edges and freckled dark spots running along its back. He doesn’t think he’s ever been the one to be gifted anything before. 

“A frog? Don’t you want, like, an antique ring or jewelry or something?”

“Are you really passing judgement on my taste right now?”

“Of course not,” Valerio heaves a loud, dramatic sigh, “I guess it’s kinda cute.” 

Polo evens his expression, “It’ll be a good keepsake to remind me of you.”

Valerio’s gaze wavers for one beat too long to be construed as anything but pending confusion.

Polo holds up the frog, bulging cheeks and lopsided eyes and imperfect features, and positions it side by side to Valerio’s face, “The similarity is uncanny.”

Valerio chuckles loudly, pulls, roughly, on Polo’s arm towards the cash register and mutters lowly something about making him pay for that. And Polo doesn’t completely understand the meaning of his words until he’s being pushed up against the doorframe of his apartment and Valerio is jiggling a key from out of his pocket and into the knob before turning it open and pushing them through to the nearest suitable surface.

Outside is lurid and bright. Painfully artificial lights are strung along balconies, windows emit the solitary brightness from forgotten kitchen fixtures and street lamps have started kicking in to prevent the serene stillness of quiet or sleep across the boulevard. Outside is loud and lively and lonely in the way only crowds of people can be.

Inside isn’t. 

Inside is quiet, with only broken gasping moans to break up the silence. It’s vibrating with imperceptible, buzzing energy.

There’s no leading up to it, no momentary eye contact or break in physical engagement to prelude that they’re doing this. Their actions are immediate and reckless, like they’re jumping off a cliff head first and trusting something, fate, clemency maybe, to catch them when they inevitably crash and burn.

Valerio presses his palm against Polo’s torso, moving lower and lower while simultaneously grazing his teeth against the tender line up along his jaw and Polo’s breath hitches at the heat simmering in the pit of his stomach. There’s something intoxicating about the exploring way in which Valerio traces with lingering fingers along Polo’s hip bones, amplified tenfold at the poorly suppressed shiver Valerio shudders when Polo squeezes his thighs on either side of Valerio’s waist in response.

Valerio is lean with muscles and feels steady as he’s towering over Polo. He’s got rough red lips, subtle dark circles under his eyes and messy frizzly hair, but he’s just as enticing as ever.

“Show off,” Valerio manages through a gasp as Polo starts rubbing his thumb up and down Valerio’s length, then pressing his fingers to the head until Valerio is too overwhelmed by pleasure to link together more words. 

He expresses what he can’t through sentences instead with body language. Soft quivers and heavy exhales and gripping hands. Polo loves it. Then, when they’re reaching a peak, when kisses turn sloppy and teeth are more involved than ever and Valerio’s touches have transcended being soft, as to not startle Polo initially, into desperate and frantic, Valerio somehow finds the words. He curses faint and with a gravelly tone and gets bossy, commanding, and Polo loves that too.

Polo’s not loud, sensitive, maybe, but a little tongue tied, a little starstruck, like he can’t believe his luck. Because Polo, Polo has been mortifyingly easy for Valerio’s hold and Valerio’s smile and Valerio’s _everything_ since the moment they first met, since he first noticed that crooked, _tilted_ , gaze. And that’s not really new. He’s used to wanting. What is new though, is the head rush that comes when he realizes he hasn’t been alone in that. 

Polo’s throat tightens and his hands pull harshly, unbounding ringlets of Valerio’s curls, and his gut clenches and he has no idea what his face is doing but it must be revealing at least a little of his gravely vehement desire for Valerio to just _touch him_ a little harder for a little bit longer. Valerio must understand, like he always does, because his eyes darken and focus in the way they do when he gets incomprehensibly passionate about something. And then, there he is, coaxing the tension out of him until the heat beginning to spiral out of control in Polo’s abdomen unfurls and he fully unravels right there, trapped between Valerio’s body and the bed. 

“Does this make you my benefactor,” Polo asks somewhere between seven minutes and five hours after the sun has set, “you buy me stuff and I fuck you in return?” 

Valerio, still mouthing at the blooming bruise of a hickey on the protruding side of Polo’s throat, shakes his head, “I’m pretty sure I was the one actually doing the fucking.”

Polo’s back arches slightly at his words and he shuts his eyes so he doesn't have to look at the glint of satisfaction he’s sure is twinkling in Valerio’s.

“Shut up,” he grumbles.

“Don't be shy now, you seemed to take to praise so well just seconds earlier.”

Polo hides in the divot of Valerio’s neck, “Jerk, I’ll never let you do that again if you continue like this.

“Let me? Last I remember you were begging for it.”

If he wasn’t already, Polo definitely goes red at that. 

It doesn’t help that Valerio’s somehow managed to nudge his knee between Polo’s, spreading his legs a little further and pushing up just the slightest, just enough to barely graze him, “Pretty sure it would take very little to convince you to do that again right now.”

Polo is breathless, and it sounds more like a whine than a question, when he asks, “Are you always so sure about everything?” 

“Not everything,” Valerio denies, “Just this.”

⋆⋆⋆

Polo wakes up short of breath and with a pounding headache to greet him. The nightmares come like clockwork now, like the creepy vintage cuckoo clock that he would pass on the way to the bathroom as a kid, pestering and maddening in their rhythmic reign of bone chilling panic.

He looks to his side at the first feeling of consciousness, half expecting Valerio to fade away as yet another punishing illusion created by his guilty psyche and half expecting the bed to be just as empty except in purposeful reality. He almost hopes as much, for the latter, for Valerio to have pursued him in hopes of a single night and left the second it was over. 

Polo’s a terrible person. He knows this. He’s a murderer. He is the reason there is a body rotting away under layers of excessively filtered, lavish soil and routinely delivered pristine bouquets of lavender and lilies. And yet, somehow, it feels a little too cruel for the universe to make him love, and have, and cherish only to lose it all. Again. 

But maybe he’s giving the universe too much credit, maybe the universe couldn’t care less about him, because Marina too once loved. And she had and she cherished and she didn’t lose it, it was _stolen_ from her. 

Polo refrains from reaching out and folding into the sleeping frame of Valerio’s body. Instead he contents himself with shielding Valerio from the warm glow peeking through the blinds, his hand cupping slightly in front of his face and tangling with the wispy pieces of hair in the wind.

 _Coward. Poor Polito, always so fucking spineless._

The words, bitter, scornful, and now lifeless, still grate him. Still trap themselves in otherwise harmless contemplation and he thinks that this must be his punishment, greater than any holding cell or fortunes wasted on good lawyers and better therapists. Those words, those memories and the harboring emotions attached to them, puncturing themselves this permanently in his chest.

The world wasn’t good to Marina, _he_ wasn’t good to her. And she has always been especially good at being resentful and getting revenge. Even in the afterlife it seems.

⋆⋆⋆

Valerio apparently has an affinity for grimy worn down places, or maybe he’s just very set in the ideology that it’s not the place that makes the experience but rather the company. No matter the case, it brings them to an abandoned pool house just off to the side from the rest of the city. 

It doesn’t actually look all that ragged, with elegant white support beams and red bricks enclosed together to make a seating area and the pool, the pool was something else entirely. Spacious and sparkling and just asking for someone to catapult into. It seemed like the type of building he would find in the interior design magazines his moms set meticulously on display in their office. 

Despite the extravagant first impression though, the longer Polo took in the chipped sturdy tiles under his bare feet and Valerio slumping against a rattling old metal sign cautioning swimmers not to dive in as the board creaks in protest, the more the place felt used, lived in. 

It’s wrapped in a sense of intimacy and solace that can only come from years of being the backdrop to budding relationships and cheerful laughter and adventures. It must be only recently abandoned then.

Valerio pats at the cold ceramic beside him, with his head lolling back and staring up. 

“How do you feel about getting hot dogs after this?” Valerio asks when Polo sits down, nuzzling up to his side in hopes that his body heat will make up for the shivering breeze.

Polo smiles at the proposal, of course he’s suggesting street food this man is single handedly trying to destroy his health, and quips, “That’s a first, I don’t think you’ve actually ever asked for my opinion on an outing before.”

“You had your chance,” Valerio says in an outcry, referring to the disaster that was a couple nights ago, “and you wasted it on fine dining.”

He says “fine dining” the way a normal person might regard being taken to a bowling alley for a date. And, okay fair, the restaurant didn’t exactly appreciate their rendition of _‘Lady and the Tramp’_ but Polo still thinks it was fairly successful. Even with bolognese sauce all over Valerio’s satin dress shirt and the obnoxiously relentless laughter that Polo is still a little mortified about escaping from his mouth, it was a very romantic night. Valerio looks especially enchanting under candlelight. 

Polo startles a bit when he feels droplets of water drip coldly against his arm and doesn’t realize until the second time that it runs off his skin that Valerio is the perpetrator. He’s cupping small handfuls of pool water and watching them trickle onto Polo’s arm, only to then start drawing ambiguous shapes with the trailing water and Polo doesn’t even have to force himself to relax under his touch. 

He looks softer like this, less dramatic and brusque and instead more mirthful and it has Polo wondering about what other mysteries he’s yet to discover about Valerio, “Where do you find places like this anyway?” 

“I like exploring unfound places, it feels special to know that it’s hidden from the rest of the world.”

He sounds very sincere, open and inviting in the way Polo first remembers noticing about him, but he still can’t help but to poke fun just a little, “Now who’s starting to sound pretentious”

Valerio huffs an amused noise and lightly smacks Polo’s arm in reprimand, “Maybe it is a little. I don’t know, I just like the idea of being called to these different places by some intuition that others don’t possess.” 

“Like fate?”

“Yeah, like I was meant to find them, like they _wanted_ me to find them and _experience_ them.” 

Polo’s breath catches in his throat at the realization that he’s being included in something so precious to Valerio, “Thank you for sharing them with me.”

Valerio just squeezes his forearm in response before grinning to himself and then making eye contact with Polo, “Oh? What happened to all your complaints?” 

His eyes are twinkling with mischief. He’s absolute trouble. 

Polo makes a mock disgruntled gasp, “I barely complain!”

Valerio hums, eyes still twinkling, and asks,“Promise to stick by that when you notice the stain on your pant leg?”

Polo hastily darts backwards to check what Valerio’s talking about and sure enough he sees the entire bottom of his left khakis smudged from the grout of the rim of the pool.

He frowns deeply and outrages, “I really liked this pair too.”

Polo’s not oblivious to the snickering he hears Valerio softly exhale under his breath or the way it makes something like fondness mixed with adrenaline bloom inside his chest.

Polo stands abruptly, his swift motion catching Valerio off guard and almost knocking him off balance.

“Well, since these pants are clearly already ruined, what do you say we just jump in?” He asks, but really it’s more of a declaration. Definite in purpose and sure of it itself in tone, because Polo wants to surprise him too, because he wants to hear that laugh again, and share a part of himself with Valerio. He’s done with one sided relationships.

“Jump in? Like, into the pool?”

He sounds incredulous but Polo catches the way his smile widens at the idea.

“Come on,” Polo urges, “leap of faith.”

Valerio bites his lip, extends his arm up to Polo, and once Polo clasps their hands together, they jump. 

The splash they create is overpowering, the large wave is imminent and submerges Polo deeper into the water before he can go up for air even once. Even with his eyes wide open it’s like he can see nothing at all, blinded by the cerulean that seems to surround him, closing in on him from every corner of his peripheral vision. _Trapping_ him. But he can’t close his eyes either, can’t hide like the coward he is and take the shortcut to relief because nothing could be worse than what he sees when his eyes are closed. What he’s reminded of. Not illusions, not fake images fluttering against his eyelids as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing, because he _doesn’t_ need to make sense of what he’s seeing, because he _caused_ what he’s seeing. 

Memories. Of Marina’s lively red hair contrasting so graphically to the steadily draining colour of her face, growing appallingly greyer and pale. Of the trickle of cerise, like rust he had taken note of before a surge of bile had forced him out of the room, unifying with the water that teachers always complained leaked from the sides of the pool, until it swirled with such a faint pigment and eventually disappeared into a drain. Of the sound of a gurgle, the last noise he heard leave Marina’s mouth, choking to inhale even the smallest bit of oxygen. 

Flashes. To swinging on the slope of a lifeguard chair, feeling higher and more invincible than he has ever before because he found the only way to end the suffering he felt rotting away at him. To dropping into the pool and feeling the blow of the water bruising at his back, like bullets, on impact. To Cayetana, _to Caye_ , pulling him out and rushing to save him, to bring him back to life, calling his name and pushing steadily against his chest as if anyone who knew him actually preferred him alive.

And just when he feels ready for it, to submit, to surrender, to hide, until his lungs collapse from the effort of straining and his heart exhausts itself from the toil of keeping him alive and beating to the tune of liability, just then, Valerio slides against him, envelope Polo’s body with his own and kisses him.

⋆⋆⋆

They’re both soaked wet through their clothes and it takes a strenuous amount of effort not to tremble as the wind blows right between their layers. They both lay flat beside the pool, Polo looking to the cloudless sky and Valerio turned to him, his cheek squished on his hand supporting him against the unsanitary tiles.

“You seemed like you had lots of practice in that?” Valerio voices, and Polo has to blink a couple of times to actually understand what he says. 

“In what? Swimming?” He tries to clarify. Underwater sex is a lot more arduous than non-underwater sex and Polo is still a little bleary from the orgasms. It’s not fair for Valerio to be trying to make conversation right now, there’s a discrepancy in power that he doesn’t appreciate.

Valerio sounds resolute when he replies, “No. In drowning.”

“I’m sorry?” Polo feels dizzy again. Valerio is usually incomprehensible, actually he doesn’t make sense more often than he does, but this is different, he’s never looked so serious before. Polo doesn’t like it a single bit, and it takes a lot for Polo to not like something of Valerio’s.

Valerio is either unfazed by Polo’s confusion or simply doesn’t care about it because he just continues, not quite rambling, not quite condensing his thoughts, “Because that’s how it happened before right? When you tried to kill yourself, it was by drowning?”

Polo goes perfectly still. He thinks somewhere off in the far, far distance, he can hear the cadence of a screeching siren or maybe that’s just the alarm bell sounding off in his mind. He should’ve known this would end in disaster. Things _always_ end in disaster for him. And he can’t just ignore this one because the inkling that something was wrong, the one he’s repressed and swallowed down and pretended had no pretenses in which to exist in this world, in this country, is admittedly, really, concretely fucking there. 

“How long have you known about that?” Polo asks, and it’s pungent and acidic the fact that this is no longer a matter of “if”.

The moment stretches in silence, it hollows out and feels immense and Polo doesn’t know how to fill it, how to fix it. Valerio’s no help, he’s holding a hand up and putting a finger down every couple of seconds like he actually has to think about it and count to the day when he found out, which is ridiculous, because this isn’t the kind of thing you read once in passing and then forget about at the next intruding thought bubble. But it’s not like Polo can find the right words, or any words at all, to fill the feeling of impending doom anyway, he figures if Valerio can act playful then maybe not all is lost. 

Valerio finally clears his throat and responds, “Since that first night. When I noticed you kept popping by the club, I did some googling. Most people’s google results of their names are their instagrams or arbitrary small town news about how they saved a cat from a tree or something. Yours was about a twitter account and sounded mysterious so I read the article and then the comments below it and it was all about your ties to some girl who was murdered at your school.” 

If Polo thought the pressure underwater was bad, this is just crushing. Like someone dropped a heavy weight right on his throat, suffocating him slowly and painfully. The noise he makes is probably eerily similar to Marina’s gurgle.

“So why?” he stutters, bumbling the words no better than he did when he first started speech therapy, “Why would you even approach me in the first place?”

“You didn’t seem like a murderer,” Valerio says easily, says nonchalantly, and it pisses Polo off, that he’s acting like this isn’t a big deal. It is. It’s a huge deal.

Polo forces out with strength, unwavering, “Well I am.”

A tiny crescent moon of a frown appears between Valerio’s eyebrows and Polo reaches out to smooth it with a press of his thumb, Valerio doesn’t flinch or move away. His eyes close for a split second and he leans into Polo’s touch before Polo’s satisfied with his expression and moves back into safer territory, deliberately placing both of his arms stiffly by his side.

“What was your reason? What is it people call it? A motive?”

Polo clenches his jaw, “Would it make a difference?”

Valerio gives an evasive shrug of his notably broad shoulders, “Probably not. I’d still like to know though.”

Right. He deserves as much, an explanation. Polo takes a deep breath and it’s sharp and stings and hurts his lungs and reminds him that he’s still alive despite everything else, and so he explains. The words tumble at the beginning, collide in the middle and then burst and diffuse and flow at the end, disharmonious like he’s been holding onto them too closely for too long.

When he’s done, when there are no more regrets or incidents or minor details or major events to analyse and relive, he turns to his side to properly look at Valerio, to stop shifting his gaze to everywhere except his face like he had been doing during the retelling.

Valerio nods, like he’s processing the words, and Polo gets that, this is a lot, he’s probably in shock. Polo’s not expecting an answer at all, maybe a disgusted glance or a dismissive wave of a hand but Valerio just nods and nods and then states, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“It’s not like you plan on killing anyone else,” he eyes Polo and then pinches his nose and asks “You _don’t_ plan on killing anyone else? Right?”

“I didn’t plan on killing _her,”_ Polo protests.

Valerio stretches too languidly to be appropriate for this conversation, “So you’re managing it, making sure it won’t happen again?”

Polo nods.

“Well, that’s all we can ask of anyone. Right?”

The pressure building up in his throat and in his chest and anywhere else he’s not numb enough to feel, fizzles and fades.

“Right.”

Valerio scratches at one of the marks on the diamond shaped slab, so unsanitary seriously they could get HPVs from this, and taps lightly in a consistent pattern.

Polo shifts his feet, lengthens his legs to soothe the prickly feeling running through and shuffles them slightly on the ceramic.

Valerio draws his legs up and stands, slowly drawling, “So, hot dogs?”

He extends a hand out for Polo. Polo stares at it, feels a rush of blood spreading throughout his body when he uses it to drag himself up and is further aware of a pulsing beat he can almost hear in his ears. Except it's not Marina's heartbeat this time, it's his own. 

“Hot dogs,” Polo affirms, waits a second and then questions, “are we sure we can’t just go to a bistro?”

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to club music while writing their first interaction and think I temporarily blasted my eardrums. In other news, here's my newest "it came in a dream concept" with my favourite mlm elite ship (i'm sorry omander fans). I hope this wasn't too cliche and melodramatic and my execution pulled this off but to be fair the few seconds that my subconscious thought this up didn't give me a ton to work with. Also, I don't actually hate Cayetana like the majority of this fandom tastelessly does, she just didn't fit in with the inital idea but it truly felt like betrayal that I wrote a pool scene without the three of them together.
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoyed and if you did, come join me on my tumblr (theuniversezecho) where ramblings of Elite ships and characters or prompts are always welcome.


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